(31-03-2015 08:28 PM)Call_of_the_Wild Wrote: I have evidence that is good enough for me.

Then your minimum standards for evidence are too low.

Quote:No, I don't know. It is laughable. Now all of a sudden it is an epigraph?? Moving goal posts, are we?? Exactly what I was talking about earlier

... Do you... not know what a pseudepigraph is?

Quote:I assume you are going to provide evidence of some of the earliest manuscripts of Luke that doesn't have verses 1-3?

You do know that the authorship of Luke, the claim that it was the Luke, companion to Paul, was a second century addition made by the church, right? I mean, you do know that this is a literal part of the history of your church?

Or does the atheist know more about the history of the gospels than you do?

Quote:See, typically, atheists forget that Paul's letters predate the Gospels. So when you say "friend of a friend told me"..with Paul it is more like "A friend of Jesus told me".

Are you really going to pretend that the epistles are the only books in the gospels, or are you going to stop dodging and accept that there are multiple other pieces of writing involved here, the majority of which are, indeed, "a friend of a friend" stories at best?

What I said earlier still applies, especially given that the author of Luke isn't mentioned in either volume. It's also interesting that you attribute Galatians to Luke, given that it's, you know, written by Paul. Do you actually know anything about the gospels at all?

Oh, and while you're here, and since you think Paul and Luke were so very, very tight, can you explain why Paul states that after his conversion he was unknown to the churches of Judea (Gal: 1: 17-24) whereas Luke was all "no, Paul totally preached the word of Jesus everywhere in Jerusalem, all the time!" Seems like kind of a huge contradiction, for Paul's bestest, best bud; in fact, it's one of many that leaves the scholarly consensus with a large amount of doubt that Luke was authored by, well, Luke.

Quote:Now of course, your job as the super-duper skeptic is to just downplay it, brush it under the rug. That is allll part of the game, folks.

And yours is, apparently, to demonstrate how little you know the bible by asserting that an epistle was a part of Luke-Acts.

Quote:Yeah, but what didn't change? The fact is, the central message is clear...Jesus died and was raised on the third day, and was seen by his followers prior to his death. That is the central message of everything..and that is why, next Sunday, millions of Christians will observe that day...that event is just about the ONLY thing in Christianity that has never changed. Christians have disagreements about lots of things, but we all agree that Jesus rose from the dead, and that has been the central message from approx 33AD, all the way up to this coming Sunday, April 5th (my b-day is April 6th )...the Resurrection is just about the only thing that all four Gospels agree on...Paul agree's with...the early church agrees with...all throughout the next 2,000 years.

Big ol' argument from popularity, all based around the idea that some books got a few details mostly right, at one of the important bits of the story. Wow.

Quote:Right, by the early church fathers (ECF). We have only a total of four Gospels...and of the four, only two were claimed to have been written by disciples....now, what I find ironic is that the ECF would claim that Peter's friend wrote the book of Mark. But why not just claim Peter wrote it? Why his friend? Peter's name would carry more weight to the book, and if you are trying to keep the Christian movement going strong as you begin to just pull names out of your ass to attach to the books, why say a friend of the disciple...why not claim the disciple wrote it?

So it's gotta be an accurate claim to authorship, because you can think up a better lie in hindsight?

Quote:Well, they may not have been in "position" to know according to YOUR standards, but apparently they had reasons to believe that the authors whom they attributed to the books were the guys that actually wrote it.

"They had their reasons," is not much of an argument.

Quote:I still want evidence of which of the four Gospels of the New Testament added epigraphs. Please provide.

Pseudepigrapha. Look it up.

Quote:As I said, the ECF...apparently they had reasons to believe it, and the fact that they claimed that two of the four Gospels were written by people that never even knew Jesus, to me, it doesn't get any more honest than that. So I will just go with what the ECF say.

Again, the fact that you can concoct a better lie after the fact is not evidence for the truth of the original claim, especially in light of the fact that what you're looking at is not a single false claim, but rather embellishment; the names were attributed to the books based on church tradition, and then later on, different church fathers added the claim that those names corresponded to the biblical figures. The initial names weren't set out with the aim of showing that the authors were the disciples, that was a thing that happened after.

Quote:Ok, so are you saying that the disciples, including Paul, did not earnestly and sincerely believe that Jesus rose from the dead?

I'm responding to something you said, please don't then pretend that I was making some bigger point that I obviously wasn't. I don't know or care what the disciples believed, since they probably had nothing to do with the claims of the gospels.

Quote:Um, because it will kinda explain why they would believe that Jesus appeared to them physically from the dead...a belief that would not be held if the body was still in the tomb.

Quote:I like to examine things on a case by case basis. Let me listen to the story, and then I will decide what to believe, and what not to believe.

So in some of them you would attribute it to a flaw in their memory. Thank you for proving my point.

Quote:Wow, I like how you just answered the question for me, and then used that answer to set up whatever point you are trying to make in the above quote

Scoffing is not an argument.

Quote:Yeah, some guy that looked like Jesus happened to appear that their house, and stay with them for about a month or so

It's a more reasonable explanation than magic. At least we know it's possible for people to look like Jesus.

Quote:Nah...as the narratives tell us, he was definitely dead. The Romans made sure of it...and even if he wasn't, his interactions with the disciples doesn't seem like interactions one would have with people after he had nails hammered through his hands, was beaten to a bloody pulp, had a crown of thorns crammed onto his head, etc.

"Nah, he must have been dead. Someone else possibly mistook him for dead too!"

Quote:Think so?

Got any proof that magic is even possible?

*Braces for incoming tu coque fallacy dodge*

Quote:Inanimate matter coming to life and beginning to talk and think...that is magic, and most of you believe that, so what is a little Resurrection action to add to the magic of things?

Scoffing and the tu coque fallacy are not arguments. Do you accept other purported historical accounts that contain magic, or not?

Quote:Nonsense. First off, this has nothing to do with extraordinary claims, because unless you have a bad memory or reading comprehension problems, I was talking about the "ordinary" claim of Luke 1:1-3, which states that the origin of the narratives were from eyewitnesses. That's it. And as I said, if you can't even get yourself to believe the simple stuff, then of course you won't believe the Resurrection.

Luke wouldn't know shit. It wasn't even written by Luke.

Quote:Is that what they call it these days?

It's more polite than "smug, dodging fuckery."

Quote:At least people in history have CLAIMED to see the Resurrected Jesus. No one has ever claimed to see a reptile-bird kind of voodoo transformation

Find me a single mainstream source that claims that's what should happen, and then we'll talk. Since you can't do that, I'll just say that lying through your teeth is not an argument.

Quote:If you get your information from first hand accounts (Paul-Peter), does that count?

Not for magic claims. I could claim to do magic right now, and you wouldn't believe me, so obviously first hand accounts alone are not sufficient.

Quote:Whoa, wait a minute...what did you actually see??

Natural things. That doesn't matter: I've made the claim, under your own argument you now have to believe it until you can prove it conclusively false.

Quote:He said something like "Paul didn't see Jesus, he saw a vision"...and I said if the vision was actually Jesus, then that is an appearance.

Look at you guys. Every time someone challenges your perfect Christianity you tremble. Now... every time you challenge say evolution... does that actually make a dent? Well, no, because you clearly don't know what you're talking about. But if you *were* a legitimate, intelligent person who *knew* what evolution was and presented a compelling alternative theory do you know what would happen? *The experts would either update the theory of evolution incorporating your stuff too, or if necessary abandon the theory altogether*. Evolution would become a relic, possibly taught for history purposes as in "Haha, look at what we used to think before CotW's ground-breaking paper"...

Science succeeds in explaining things because science *changes* to fit what we know of the world. Religion fails because it's rigid. It only changes (very unwillingly) when society makes practices like homosexuality acceptable and religions start to lose members over their hardline attitudes.

In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", Coleridge writes that the wedding guest was told of the events by an eyewitness. Do you believe that they really saw death playing dice for the sailor's souls?

In "Treasure Island", the author says that he is writing down the tale at the request of people who had direct knowledge of the events. Does that mean that it is historically accurate?

The idea that a book is accurate because the author writes that he got the information from eyewitnesses to the events is laughable unless you have other independent corroboration. What we have in the bible is, at best, fan fiction.

Atheism: it's not just for communists any more!
America July 4 1776 - November 8 2016 RIP

(01-04-2015 04:49 AM)Chas Wrote: This proves you have a childish, willfully ignorant misunderstanding of evolution.

Are you really this stupid? It's hard to differentiate this from mental illness.

(01-04-2015 06:10 AM)Rahn127 Wrote: I wish stupidity could be bred out of our species, but unfortunately religion attaches itself to the gullible mind.

Make a list of your family tree going back five generations and you don't need actual names. Great Great Great grandfather on down, including distant cousins.

You share a common ancestor with your distant cousin.

We share a common ancestor with great apes.

Its as simple as that.

(01-04-2015 04:54 AM)goodwithoutgod Wrote: ahhhhh nothing starts my day off better than reading the absolute stupidity that falleth from Wail of the Child's mouth as he tries vainly to validate his delusion

Ahhh yes. This kinda reminds me of when I very first started the "life suddenly arose from nonliving material" stuff...and one of the joker atheists said something like "who said it "suddenly" arose...it happened gradually over long periods of time".

So basically, he just threw time in there as if that somehow solved the problem, and that is exactly what you jokers are doing....you guys are basically saying "No, we didn't evolve from apes...both humans and apes share a common ancestor"...as if that is supposed to somehow solve the problem

I don't believe evolution happened AT ALL, ok? Whether it happened suddenly in a split second, or gradually over millions of years....whether humans evolved from apes, or whether humans and apes BOTH evolved from something else...how it happened is IRRELEVANT.